


Trails of Darkness

by Demiwitchwoodwalker



Series: The Lion Hidden Underneath [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Andromeda is still a good aunt, Angst with a Happy Ending, Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Dobby's questionable ways of saving Harry, Draco Malfoy Needs a Hug, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Good Draco Malfoy, Gryffindor Draco Malfoy, Hogwarts Second Year, Lucius Malfoy Being an Asshole, Lucius Malfoy's A+ Parenting, Multi, POV Draco Malfoy, Pansy and Blaise are still terrible, Slow To Update, The Snake Squad, The Weasley Twins are great, Theo is secretly precious, because i can do what i want, because that's how my fics and Harry Potter work, honestly, petrification, the golden quartet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28253610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demiwitchwoodwalker/pseuds/Demiwitchwoodwalker
Summary: Draco Malfoy grew up wanting nothing more than to make his parents proud, but his chance of ever doing that flew out the window the second the word “Gryffindor” came from the Sorting Hat a year prior. After that, he wasn’t no longer a proper Malloy, he was an outcast. His friends abandoned him and his father all but disowned him, he was alone. Until he wasn’t, then he almost wished he was because the three who became his friends seemed to cause nothing but trouble. Then again, becoming friends with Harry Potter has no way of being ordinary or completely safe. Still, getting wrapped in a dangerous mystery two years in a row was not what Draco expected, not exactly wanted. Not that he’d give it up for anything, however.2nd part of my Gryffindor Draco AU that is still being written due to (somewhat) lack of things to do in Quarantine.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Andromeda Black Tonks, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy & Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy & Theodore Nott, Draco Malfoy & Theodore Nott & Pansy Parkinson & Blaise Zabini (past), Hermione Granger & Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger & Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley
Series: The Lion Hidden Underneath [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1710832
Comments: 6
Kudos: 65





	1. The Flying Car

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y’all! Okay, I know I said I would have this out around Thanksgiving, and I meant to, but I sorta never got around to finishing the chapter so it took longer than expected. Anyways, I am going to try and update frequently, and I hope this was worth the wait!
> 
> Also, I would like to thank my wonderful beta reader for helping with this, you can find her [Here](https://happylittletrees3.tumblr.com/)

Draco Malfoy was tired. That seemed to happen a lot since he had returned to Malfoy Manor after his first year at Hogwarts; it was difficult to sleep when it felt like the shadows in the house were reaching towards him like claws, inches from grabbing hold of him and dragging him away into the darkness. 

His father wasn’t much help either regarding the whole failure to properly sleep thing—he seemed to be watching every single thing Draco did with an abundance of attention. He had stopped him more than once when Draco had been sending letters to his friends with one of the family’s owls—never his father’s or mother’s, always one of the other ones—and threatened to take away his privileges of using the birds. So far he’d had no luck in stopping Draco, mainly because his mother had somehow convinced him that if he stopped sending letters to people they might start to get suspicious, not that there was anything to be suspicious of in her opinion. Still, it had been nerve wracking for his father to say that it was even a possibility that he couldn’t write his friends, or his aunt, and—during the last couple weeks—his cousin Nymphadora, or Tonks, as she preferred.

His Aunt Andromeda had started talking a lot more about Tonks in the letters she sent him over the summer. Tonks was home until her second year of Auror training started in late August, which apparently meant that she was being even more reckless than before. At first nothing she said had really seemed that interesting, mostly just things about auror training, but after a few letters Andromeda started, in a somewhat mocking tone, telling him about the failed “romances'' Tonks had had during training, the pranks she had pulled on her fellow trainees (as well as on Andromeda and Ted) along with many other things that were entertaining enough that Draco wasn’t always feeling like he just wanted to shrink into the floor of the Manor and hide until the first day of September. He’d started owling Tonks during the second week of July, partially because he wanted to hear things from her perspective and partially just because she seemed cool. Since then they’d been owling rather consistently, though not quite as often as Draco did with Ron and Hermione.

He had received his first letter from Ron two days into break, and from Hermione a week later. Harry hadn’t sent him anything, nor did it seem like he’d received any of the letters Draco had sent him. After the first few letters came back unread, Draco had simply assumed the family owls had gotten lost—that happened sometimes when they delivered a letter to someone for the first time. But by the fourth time an owl returned with the letter still attached to its leg, Draco wasn’t so sure anymore. He had asked Ron and Hermione in it in his next letter if they’d had the same thing happen, and had received the same response from both of them—Harry hadn’t sent them anything, and their letters seemed to just disappear after they sent them.

There had been a couple of times in the past couple months when Draco had wondered if Harry’s relatives hadn’t let him send messages to his friends, like his parents had threatened to do to him. It didn’t make sense that they would do that, however, and there shouldn’t have been any way for them to have stopped him from reading the letters they all had sent him since June. Still, about a month into break he’d mentioned it in one of his letters to Ron, who seemed to agree that Harry wasn’t responding because of his aunt and uncle. Not long after that Ron sent him a letter saying that he, Fred, and George had an idea on how to get both Harry and Draco out of their houses and to theirs, though it would be a little while before they could successfully pull it off. He didn’t tell Draco much in any of their letters, in fact they barely mentioned it in the next few ones they sent each other. Not until about a week ago, that is, when Ron had written in the end of a letter that they were going to break them out on August 3rd, after dark.

So, Draco packed everything he would need for school, which was practically everything he owned at that point, over the course of the week before they were planning on coming to get him. It was surprisingly difficult to hide from his parents that he was putting everything into his trunk again. Usually they stayed away from him, and ignored him, but one of the house elves must have mentioned or hinted at the fact that he was packing everything up because they seemed to either come by his room every hour or so or just made him do things that didn’t really need doing to keep him out of his room. 

He warned Ron in his next letter that his parents were more on edge and might have made the wards surrounding the manor more powerful due to that, so he had to be careful when he came. Ron didn’t really say much in response to that besides that they would be in and out before anyone even knew they were there.

On August 3rd, Draco didn’t even bother going to bed. Maybe that was why he was tired, but at the same time he knew there was no chance he would be able to fall asleep if he tried, so he just pushed an armchair that was usually in front of his fireplace next to the window so he could wait there until Ron arrived. He had no idea how they were planning on getting him out, Ron hadn’t told him that, though he highly doubted they would come by floo—that plan had too many flaws, could fall apart too easily, and it wasn’t something Fred and George would even think of doing. It would probably involve some sort of flying however, that seemed like the kind of plan the twins would come up with, so he sat by the biggest window in his room, the one he had told Ron was his to make sure they went to the right one.

The night was clear, sky a dark, navy blue, sprinkled with silver stars, and trees swayed slightly in the distance from a soft breeze. Draco’s room was warm due to the sun having shone directly into it almost the entire day, but still he shuddered a little where he was sitting in the armchair. He wasn’t cold, if he was he could’ve just gotten the blanket off of his bed and curled up in it, but some part of him was nervous about Ron and the twins coming. Pacing didn’t help, that Draco knew both from having tried and just from the fact that pacing never helped him release his nervous, pent-up energy. He stared out the window at the night sky, arms wrapped tightly around himself as he bounced his leg, fingers tapping irregular beats onto his upper arms.

There was no noise coming from any part of the manor, everyone had gone to bed, even the house elves had disappeared about an hour ago. The silence was almost more anxiety inducing than if there was some sound in the house, mostly due to the fact that if Ron got there and made any noise whatsoever, they’d be caught. He glanced around somewhat hesitantly, the shadows in his room once again looking like they were reaching for him despite the fact that he had multiple candles lit in his room to keep the darkness away. A shudder ran up his spine again and he turned back to face out the window, almost not noticing the sudden addition of two small lights among the expanse of stars in the distance. 

Draco sat up straight and moved towards the window, his ears picking up on a faint rumbling coming from outside. He squinted out into the darkness, watching the two steadily growing balls of light as they got closer and closer, no longer looking as if they might be stars. A small, involuntary confused noise escaped him and he leaned against the window sill in an attempt to see better without actually touching the glass. Just as he did that, there was a sudden shimmer in the air around the lights, like small rainbows caused by light being shone through a crystal with dozens of edges. Whatever those lights were, or were attached to, had just flown through the wards surrounding Malfoy Manor, meaning his parents were likely both awake, or waking up due to whatever type of alarm was attached to the wards.

Draco bit his lower lip and looked around his room, eyes landing on the closed trunk lying on his bed. Whatever those lights were probably had something to do with how Ron, Fred, and George were planning on getting him out of there, meaning he would need to get that and bring it over to the window. The only issue with that was Draco was not strong enough to carry his trunk all the way to the window without help. 

The rumbling outside grew louder, no longer sounding at all distant and Draco turned to face his window again, heart pounding, though if that was caused by fear or excitement he didn’t know. The lights were close, probably only ten or so meters away, and he blinked in an attempt to see past them at what they were a part of, his room illuminating around him. If his parents hadn’t been woken up by the wards, then they would be awake now due to all the noise whatever it was that was out there was making.

Squinting, Draco quickly unlocked the latch on the window and threw it open, letting a soft, warm breeze inside. The thing that the lights were attached to finally became discernible as it drew nearer; it was something that he had never properly seen before and it was flying decently quickly towards him. 

Judging by the metal structure, the glass windows, and the four rubber tires, Draco assumed it was a muggle car, something he could vaguely remember Theo once rambling to him about. Back then he had mostly ignored him, because before he had met Harry, Ron, and Hermione everything that had to do with muggles had seemed disorderly and horrendous, wrong in some way or another. Theo hadn’t seemed to share that viewpoint until they had started attending Hogwarts however, which in retrospect was sort of odd. Despite his lack of interest in what Theo had been talking about, he was pretty sure he would have remembered if he had mentioned that they could fly. It could have just been something that was newly added to cars, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t the case, meaning it was likely flying due to magic. 

The car suddenly turned so that the lights were no longer facing into Draco’s room and moved closer to his window, coming to a stop just a meter or so away. The door closest to Draco opened to reveal Ron, who had a grin on his face, though he looked more relieved than excited, as he usually did when he was grinning.

“Ron!” Draco exclaimed and grinned back at him, a combination of relief, happiness, and slight fear coursing through him at the sight of his best friend after over a month of not seeing him. “How in Merlin’s name is that thing flying?”

“My dad bewitched it, he loves messing with muggle stuff. C’mon, you got your stuff packed? George says we set off some sort of alarm wards back there, like you said we would, so we need to hurry, I think.” Draco stared at him for a second before nodding. He pushed himself off of the window sill he’d been leaning against and rushed over to his bed, which was neatly made with his trunk laying on top of the blankets. Grabbing hold of the sides of it, he attempted to pick it up, only to have it slip from his fingers and nearly fall onto his foot, which he only prevented by quickly moving forward again to make it fall back on the bed instead.

“You need any help?” One of the twins, likely George due to the mole on the left side of his nose, asked. Draco jumped slightly and stared at him for a couple of seconds, his confusion likely evident on his face. He’d appeared at Draco’s side as if he’d apparated, though that would have made noise and he was too young to do so anyways, meaning he must have just moved really quickly.

“How - I - Whatever… Maybe, a little help would be nice.” The words came out more like a question than a statement and George smirked, grabbing hold of the trunk. The smirk quickly morphed into a grimace, eyes darting down to look at the trunk in shock before looking back up at Draco and moving to only hold one end. 

“What do you have in here, rocks or something?”

“Shut up,” Draco muttered and grabbed the other end of the trunk, helping George lift it. Together they carried the trunk across the room, moving around the armchair he’d moved before, not having realized it might have been in the way of getting stuff out the window. Just as they were about to reach the window the faint sound of footsteps echoed through the hall outside of his room, causing Draco to freeze in place. It was hard to tell whether they belonged to his mother or father, but neither of the two would be good right now.

“Hurry!” he hissed and looked frantically out the window to see that the car had turned again so the back was facing them. George quickly let go of the trunk and opened the back, then grabbed the trunk again, helping Draco hoist it up into the car before slamming it shut again. The car pulled away for a moment, turning as it did so, before moving closer again, the passenger door once again facing them. George climbed up onto the window sill and swiftly got into the front seat of the car just as the Draco’s door swung open behind him, slamming into the wall beside it with a loud thud. 

“Draco!” his mother yelled, her voice sounding both panicked and annoyed at the same time. “What are you doing?”

He turned back to face her by instinct, staring at her for a moment before spinning around again and following George’s example, getting into the car beside Ron in the back seat. 

“I’m sorry, mum,” he said quietly, looking back at where she was still standing in the doorway of his bedroom and then pulling the car door closed. What he was sorry for, he wasn’t really sure, all he knew was that he felt guilty for something.


	2. Privet Drive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, sorry this took so long! Hopefully the next update will be sooner since I have more of a schedule now (planning on updating this Wednesdays or Thursdays, unless I have a bunch of tests). 
> 
> Also, once again, I would like to thank my wonderful beta reader for helping with this, you can find her [Here](https://happylittletrees3.tumblr.com/)

“You need to go further west, Fred,” George said, eyes focused on the compass that was only just visible in the darkness. The car tilted slightly to the left, continuing to fly through the night, nothing visible but the stars and dark navy blue sky outside through the windshield.

“How do you guys even know where Harry lives?” Draco asked a few seconds later. Harry had never told them where exactly he lived, just that it was in Surrey somewhere, which didn’t really narrow it down much. Surrey was in no way small, and the fact that his relatives were incredibly muggle gave no hints as to even what corner of Surrey to look in.

“He told Hermione his address before break so that she could send him letters the muggle way. It didn’t seem to end up working, but she’s pretty sure it’s the right address because none of us got responses from him. The real issue was finding exactly where his street is because we don’t own any maps of Surrey,” Ron explained and Draco blinked, nodding slowly even though he was still slightly confused. If Harry hadn’t even responded to muggle post, then something was definitely wrong. There were spells that could block owls from finding places, wards that could in many aspects be considered protective, but there shouldn’t be a way to block that type of mail, not when it reaching its destination had to do with a specific address.

“We didn’t actually find out where he lives, Hermione did. She said that if she didn’t hear back from him by the time we get our letters from Hogwarts for next year, she was going to get her parents to take her to his house so she could check up on him. She also agreed to help us, so I think she really is expecting that we’ll get him out, or maybe she thinks we’ll fail and that’s her back up plan,” George hesitated slightly, as if he had only realized the latter was an option in that moment. “Which would be sort of rude if it was the case.”

Draco snorted and glanced over at Ron who looked a bit embarrassed at the fact that he hadn’t managed to hide that he wasn’t the one who figured out where Harry lives. “Knowing Hermione, it’s probably the second one…” he muttered and Draco grinned again, though he attempted to hide it behind his hand.

“There!” George suddenly yelled, pointing down through the front window of the car at the ground. “That neighborhood, um… third street to the right.”

Fred looked over at him for a moment, gaze quite obviously confused as he raised an eyebrow before somehow steering the car lower to the ground and over the street George was pointing at. He stopped at the end, hovering at level with the second floors of each of the small, uniform houses on the street, a pole with a sign nearly right in front of them that read ‘ _Privet Drive_ ’.

“This is the place… What number again?” Fred asked, once again looking over at his twin who too looked uncertain for a moment, ruffling around in his pockets and pulling a slip of paper from them. He squinted at the paper, then thoughtfully looked down the street. 

“Four, I think,” he said and Fred quickly drove further forward to the second house on the right side of the street. There was a lamppost right in front of the two story house that looked so obnoxiously muggle it seemed impossible that anyone with magic would ever live there, even against their own will. The bulb flickered in the lamppost, casting a faint yellow glow over the sidewalk and low brick wall in front of the yard that looked as if someone worked on it every single day. Briefly the bulb’s light grew brighter, illuminating the front of the house more to reveal an ordinary muggle house, except for the top left-most window which had bars covering it as if it was holding something dangerous inside, like it was a prison or a cage.

“I… get the feeling the barred window might be Harry’s…” Draco muttered and all three Weasley brothers nodded, though they didn’t look all too happy with it. Fred slowly pulled up to the barred window, turning so Ron’s door was closest to it, as they’d done at Draco’s earlier.

For a moment none of them moved, all somewhat nervous of what would happen if they did. None of them knew what to expect when they saw Harry, he could be hurt, he could be fine, he could be anywhere in between. They had no way of knowing. 

Ron took a deep breath and rolled down his window, leaning out and raising his hand as if to touch the bars just inches from him. Before he could move further, however, a light turned on inside the room and Harry appeared on the other side of the glass. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, likely due to having been asleep, or at least having been trying to sleep, and his hair was even more of a mess than usual. His cheeks were a bit more sunken in than they had been the last time Draco had seen him, and his green eyes looked a bit duller, though that could’ve just been the fact that it was late and there wasn’t much light. The window slid open behind the bars and Draco instinctively moved closer both in an attempt to be seen and to be able to see Harry better himself.

“Ron,” Harry started, voice confused and also slightly awed, “how are you - what the - _Draco?_ ”

“You alright, Harry?” George asked, grinning even though he looked more concerned than happy or excited. The slip of paper he’d held was ripped to shreds and clenched tightly in his fist.

“What’s been going on with you?” Ron asked before Harry could respond to his brother’s question. “Why haven’t you been answering our letters? I asked you about a dozen times to come, and then Dad came home this morning and said you got an official warning from the Ministry because you did magic in front of muggles-”

“That wasn’t me—and how does he know about that anyways?”

“He works for the Ministry,” Ron said as if that was something they should already be aware of, though Draco couldn’t recall him having mentioned that before. Then again, to him it wasn’t news, so if he had said something about it, there was a high chance his brain wouldn’t process it as important. 

“Wait, “ Draco interrupted before he could finish speaking, looking from Ron to Harry in a combination of bewilderment and confusion. “What? Harry, you _know_ we’re not allowed to use magic outside of school -”

“Says you guys,” Harry said, indicating to the car that they were in which was, in all fairness, obviously magic due to the fact that it was flying.

“Oh, this doesn’t count,” Ron said quickly, pointedly ignoring the slight raised eyebrow from Draco due to the fact that even if it didn’t count, this was still _definitely_ not allowed. “We’re borrowing this, it’s Dad’s. _We_ didn’t charm it. But to do magic in front of the muggles you live with -”

“I already said that wasn’t me! I’ll explain that later though. Listen, can you tell the teachers at Hogwarts that the Dursleys locked me up and won’t let me go back, and since I of course can’t spell myself out of here because then the ministry will think it’s my second spell in three days -”

“Stop saying ridiculous things like that,” Ron cut him off, grinning slightly as he shook his head. “We’re here to take you back home with us.” 

Harry looked from the twins to Draco to Ron, eyebrows furrowed in obvious confusion. His lips tugged down at the corners and he tilted his head slightly to the right. “But you can’t spell me out either.”

“Don’t need to,” Ron said, grin widening as he nodded towards Fred and George. “You’re forgetting who else is here.”

“Here, tie this to the bars,” Fred said, tossing the end of a rope that he’d seemingly pulled out of nowhere over to Harry as if it were a completely normal thing to do. 

“Did you guys know this was going to happen or something?” Draco demanded, staring at the twins for a moment and then at the thick rope. “I feel like there are a lot of things you guys should have explained to me on the way here.”

George grinned back at him from the front seat, eyes glinting with an odd sort of excitement. “It was just in case, we didn’t really know what we’d find at either of your houses,” he said, a bit too lightheartedly considering the fact that they were talking about breaking two different people out of their homes.

“If the Dursleys wake up, I’m a dead man,” Harry said, voice low and near a whisper as he quickly tied the rope around three of the bars, pulling at the rope to make sure it was tight before letting go. 

“Don’t worry,” Fred said, still grinning even though it once again had a bit of a concerned look hidden behind it, “but move away from the window.” 

Harry quickly backed up into the room, becoming nearly completely shrouded in shadows as he did so. Fred turned the car so that they were facing out at the houses across the street and drove them forward way faster than Draco had expected the car to be capable of. There was a clang behind them and the car shot forward a bit quicker than it had before, pulling to an abrupt halt at the edge of the Dursleys’ yard. Draco and Ron both slid forward in their seats, nearly falling to the ground with the momentum.

Ron groaned slightly, rubbing his forehead with his hand for a moment before reaching out of his car window and pulling the bars they had ripped from Harry’s window up into the car. How they’d done that successfully was a mystery to Draco, the rope didn’t even seem to be attached to anything in the car, so it pulling something off of a wall was… confusing. The bars just barely fit through the small car window, and he had to adjust the way he was pulling them inside a few times before they finally got through. Ron put them onto the floor and then pushed them under the seat as Fred pulled the car up to Harry’s window again.

“Get in,” Ron said to Harry who had run back up to the window and was leaning out towards them. 

“But my stuff for Hogwarts--my wand, my broom -”

“Where are they?” Draco asked, and Harry glanced back at the door that was just barely visible in the dim lighting of his room. 

“Locked in the cupboard under the stairs and I can’t get out of the room -”

“No problem,” George interrupted, waving his hand in an odd gesture towards Fred who backed up a bit so that George’s door was right in front of Harry’s window instead of Ron’s. “Out of the way, Harry.” 

The twins climbed out of the car and through Harry’s window as George must’ve done at Draco’s, landing smoothly inside without tripping. George pulled something small and needlelike out of his pocket and the twins became difficult to see as they went over to the door.

“Many wizards think it’s a waste of time to learn these types of muggle tricks, but we believe it’s worth it, even if it takes a little longer this way,” one of the twins said, though it was somewhat difficult to tell which one since their voices were so similar. Light burst into the room as the door opened, meaning there was another light on in the house somewhere and Fred and George disappeared through it, speaking to Harry briefly in voices too quiet to be heard from outside with the car’s engine still running.

Harry began to hurry around the room, grabbing his glasses and putting them on before throwing a small closet open and grabbing everything inside it at once. How he owned so little that he could do that, Draco didn’t know and wasn’t completely sure he wanted to. He handed the clothes out through the window to Ron who frowned at them for a second before shoving them under the car seat as well, since otherwise there was nowhere they could really put the clothes if Harry was going to ride in the back of the car with them. Harry looked around the room for another minute, but didn’t pick anything else up.

“Do you not -” Draco started to ask Harry in a hushed whisper but before he could finish Fred and George stumbled into the room, carrying Harry’s truck between them. Both were slightly out of breath, faces visibly tinged red, but still they carried the trunk up to the windowsill.

“Turn the car!” Fred hissed and Ron stared at him, mouth hanging open, eyes wide. 

“What? I don’t know how to drive this thing!” George sighed, glancing briefly over his shoulder at the open door that led further into the house. He carefully laid the trunk down on the floor and then climbed out the window and into the car, clambering over to the driver’s side. The car turned, pulling away from the house ever so slightly as George turned the steering wheel, before backing up again a bit. The sound of a latch opening came from behind and Draco looked back to see Fred opening the back of the car, effectively blocking his view of what was going on. A bang signaled the back being closed again and without a word George turned the car again so that Harry and Fred could get in.

“Move!” Fred whispered to George, “I’m driving.”

“Fine.” George scrambled back over the passenger seat and climbed back through Harry's bedroom window, landing on the floor with a soft thud. Harry glanced behind himself for a second, gaze directed out the door as Fred climbed out the window and over to the driver’s seat, George quickly following him again. 

“Harry!” Draco hissed and his gaze snapped forward to him, away from the door. He moved towards the window, grabbing hold of the ledge to hoist himself up onto it like the twins had already done. A loud shriek caused all of them to freeze, however, Harry stumbling back away from the window and nearly falling to the floor.

“THAT DAMN OWL!” A voice yelled from somewhere in the house and Harry flinched, scrambling over to a corner of the room that was hidden in shadows. 

“I forgot Hedwig!” He hissed, tone panicked, eyes wide as he handed an owl cage through the window to Ron, who had pushed his door wide open. The light went on in the hallway behind Harry, flooding the room with sudden brightness. Harry grabbed the windowsill again, hoisting himself up onto it just as Harry’s uncle stormed into the room. He froze in the doorframe, staring first at Harry then at the four others outside before he began to move again. 

Harry glanced back at him and then reached out for Ron’s outstretched hand, grabbing hold of it at the same time as his uncle grabbed hold of his ankle. Draco immediately reached out as well, grabbing hold of Harry’s other arm with both hands, Fred and George doing the same.

“Petunia!” Uncle Vernon screamed, grip still tight around Harry’s ankle like his hands were made of metal, “he’s escaping! HE’S ESCAPING!” 

Draco pulled harder at Harry’s arm, ignoring the small part of his brain screaming that this tug-of-war of sorts happening could seriously hurt Harry if either side pulled too hard. Finally, Harry’s ankle slipped free from his uncle’s grip and he fell into the car, nearly knocking Ron on top of Draco in the process. Harry and Ron both slammed the door shut, slumping down into the seat in exhaustion, breathing heavily.

“Go, Fred!” Ron yelled and the car jolted beneath them, taking off into the sky, away from Harry’s family’s house. Harry grinned over at Draco for a moment before he leaned out the window Ron hadn’t rolled back up, black curls blowing into his eyes from the window, making his hair messier than it already was, somehow.

“See you next summer!” 

Draco snorted, trying not to grin as the three Weasley brothers all laughed, Harry slumping back into the seat. His head fell back, eyes sliding shut behind his glasses and grin wide. Tension seeped out of his shoulders and he looked more relaxed than Draco had seen him in a long time, even after they had figured out what was going on with Quirrell and the Philosopher’s Stone. Something in Draco seemed to ease up in that moment, like he’d been holding his breath beforehand.

“Let Hedwig out,” Harry said, voice oddly quiet as he cracked his eyes open and looked over at Ron. “She can fly behind us. It’s been a while since she’s been able to stretch her wings.”

Without even glancing back, George handed one of the hair pins back to Ron, placing it in his awaiting palm. Ron turned the pin over in his hand, sticking the two-pointed end into the lock, wriggling it around and twisting it every second or so.

“How do you do that?” Draco asked, leaning closer to Ron in an attempt to see better what he was doing. He shrugged slightly in response and he grinned crookedly at him, blue eyes glinting.

“I don’t really know, just sort of move the pin around til it opens.” The lock clicked and the latch opened, allowing Ron to pull it off the cage and open the door. Hedwig immediately flew out and soared through the open car door into the night. Her white feathers seemed to glow like pearls against the navy blue sky, almost like there was some magic to the owl, which technically there might’ve been.

“So, tell us, Harry,” Ron said as turned to face Harry in the car seat, placing Hedwig’s cage on the floor at his feet. “What happened?”

The tension that had bled out of Harry returned in an instant and he sat up straighter, grin melting into a grimace. He opened his mouth as if he was going to speak, only to close it again seconds later, a nervous glint in his eyes.

“Well… If I’m being completely honest, I don’t really know,” he started slowly. “A couple of days ago, my aunt and uncle had guests over, so I was supposed to be up in my bedroom. Except when I went upstairs, there was something—or someone, I guess—in my room already; a… houself? He said his name was Dobby, told me not to go back to Hogwarts-”

Whatever Harry said after that basically fell on deaf ears. Draco froze the second he heard the name _Dobby,_ eyes widening, jaw dropping open in shock. Surely he must’ve heard something wrong, why would Dobby tell Harry not to go back to Hogwarts?

“Wait…” Draco interrupted, gaze snapping up to Harry from where it had been focused on his hands. “Harry, you said _Dobby,_ right?”

Harry looked over at him, eyebrows scrunching in confusion as he nodded. “Yeah, why?”

“Because one of my family’s house elves is named Dobby, and…” he trailed off, not sure how to continue. If the house elf that told him not to come back to Hogwarts was his family’s Dobby, then… he either had his own plan, which seemed somewhat unlikely, or Draco’s father had something to do with this. Of course, there was the possibility that his mother was the one involved, but that seemed even more unlikely than Dobby himself having a plan.

“You’re saying it was your house elf that did all of that?” Ron asked, tone not exactly judging, more confused, but still somewhat annoyed.

“I - not exactly. He’s not _my_ elf, he’s my father’s, which… could mean it's his fault, but - I… I don’t know, I -” Draco broke off again, feeling guilty for reasons he couldn’t quite figure out. He should’ve known, he was the only one whose letters came back instead of disappearing, he saw Dobby nearly every day, he should’ve been able to tell something was off.

“Draco, we don’t blame you if it was your father’s elf. You obviously had nothing to do with this either way. Just-why would your father try to stop Harry from going to Hogwarts?” Ron said, glancing at Harry before looking back at Draco.

“I don’t know, he never liked him, he always talked about Harry like he was scared of him.”

“Why would he be scared of me?”

“Well… he wasn’t exactly on the light side of the war with Voldemort, and he only just escaped going to Azkaban when it was over. He claims he was under the Imperius Curse, wasn’t in control of what he was doing, but I don’t really think that’s true. If he’s trying to stop you from going to Hogwarts, Harry, it can’t mean anything good. My father isn’t exactly known for his plans, but… he escaped being arrested and is somehow now one of the most influential and respected wizards at the Ministry of Magic, so… he must not be bad at them. We need to be careful at school, Harry. Maybe even more than we were last year.”

“I don’t that’ll be hard, we weren’t exactly cautious last year.” Ron scoffed, grinning even though the look in his eyes showed the opposite of amusement. “What do you think he’s up to?”

“I… have no idea.”

“Either way,” Ron said after a long moment of silence, shaking his head ever so slightly, “I’m glad we got you guys out of those places, whether you guys were in danger, or not. I was really bloody worried about you, Harry. When you didn’t answer my letters, I… At first I thought it was Errol’s fault, but -”

“Who’s Errol?” Harry cut in, though whether he really cared about that and didn’t just want to avoid the topic of Ron being worried was impossible to know. Every time anyone had shown worry for Harry since Draco had met him, he’d always gotten tense and tried to change the subject, as if it bothered him that people actually cared about him.

“Our owl,” Ron replied, seemingly not having noticed the shift in Harry’s expression. “He’s ancient. Wouldn’t be too surprising if he had a heart attack while taking someone a letter. I tried to borrow Hermes -”

“Who?”

“The eagle owl that Mum and Dad got Percy when he became a prefect,” Fred answered before Ron could, glancing back at them from the driver’s seat.

“But Percy didn’t want me to,” Ron muttered, scowling slightly, and words from one of his letters to Draco drifted back to the front of his mind- _I swear, sometimes I just want to punch Percy so bad._

“Said he needed him for something.” Ron continued, scowl deepening. 

“Percy’s been acting weird all summer,” George commented, not looking up from the map and compass he had in his hands, tilted towards his door’s window so that a beam of moonlight hit them. “And he has been sending loads of letters, along with hiding away in his room for way longer than usual… I mean, you can’t polish your prefect badge that many times… You’re flying too far west, Fred,” he added, tilting the compass slightly towards his twin who glanced at it for a second before turning the steering wheel slightly to the right.

“Hey, does your dad even know that you guys have the car?” Harry asked suddenly, though judging by the look on his face he already knew the answer was not a yes.

“Um, not exactly,” Ron muttered, glancing over at Draco as if he could help him in some way, though all he did was shrug. This hadn’t been his plan, it had been all Ron and the twins, he’d just known bits and pieces of it. “He had to work tonight. Hopefully we can get the car back into the garage without Mum noticing.”

Harry blinked, looking as if he wanted to say something, only to hesitate. “What exactly does your dad do in the Ministry?”

“He works in the most boring department there, in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office.” Draco grimaced, of course he’d technically known that because his father had many times spoken about how _terrible_ and _low class_ of a job that was, the job of _bloodtraitors_ , but the fact that Ron too seemed to think it was a lame job was off-putting somehow.

“ _Where?”_ Harry demanded, eyes wide as he stared at Ron in a combination of surprise and confusion.

“He works with Mugglestuff that’s been charmed or cursed; the kind of things that definitely can’t end up in muggle stores or in muggle houses. Like last year, for example, the tea set of an old witch who had died was sold to an antique store. A muggle woman bought it, took it home and tried to serve tea to some of her friends with it. It was a nightmare, Dad had to work overtime for weeks -” Draco could vaguely remember the spring before his first year listening to his dad make fun of that particular incident and how it was the closest thing to an interesting event Arthur Weasley would ever get to work with.

“What happened?”

“The teacan freaked out and sprayed boiling hot water everywhere, a man had to go to the hospital with sugartongs on his nose. Dad was completely out of his depth, he and this little old wizard named Perkins are the only ones who know what to do with things like that and they had to use all sorts of memory charms and things like that to cover the thing up -”

“But your dad - this car -”

Fred interrupted Harry, barking out an amused laugh as he glanced back at them. “Yeah, Dad’s mad for everything that has to do with muggles, our shed is stuffed full with Muggle stuff. He takes it apart, charms it, and then puts it back together again. If he were to search our house, he’d have to arrest himself on the spot. It drives Mum mad.”

“That’s the main road,” George said a few moments later, leaning forward slightly to get a better look through the windshield of the car as he lowered the map he held. “We’ll be there in about ten minutes… about time, too, it’s starting to get bright…”

Slowly the car descended closer to the buildings that came into view below, outlined in gold and orange by the tiny amount of sunlight that was peeking out from the east horizon. It was pretty in a simple way, something that most would probably think looks nice but would forget about fifteen minutes later. 

“That’s the town,” George murmured, though whether he was happy or annoyed to be back was impossible to tell. “Ottery St. Catchpole…”

The name was somewhat odd, but then again, they went to a school that was named “Hogwarts”, so in comparison Ottery St. Catchpole wasn’t all too bad. The car descended quicker, until the wheels nearly brushed the leaves of the trees below them as they flew out of the town to the outer rim, where there were far fewer houses that were spread out across the green fields and hills that stretched on for miles. 

“Success!” Fred yelled when the car touched the ground, driving a few more yards across the dirt pathway leading from the gate behind them up to a house that was the least muggle looking place Draco had ever seen. 

The bottom seemed like a small farmhouse, but after the first floor rooms and levels stuck out at random, varying in size and shape. It was barely held together, tilting to the side as if it was one too strong gust of wind away from collapsing, though it was likely stronger than most houses due to the fact that it was obviously held up by all sorts of spells that made the area seem to shine, the air around it somehow thick with smells of all kinds. Five chimneys stuck out of the red roof that towered over the house, each a different shade of rustic brown and a different size. A sign was stuck into the ground next to the front door, the word _Burrow_ painted in large letters on it, surrounded by dozens of pairs of rubber boots of all different colors and sizes and an ancient looking rusted cauldron. Chickens wandered aimlessly around the yard, pecking at the ground in search of food, undisturbed by the fact that they’d shown up out of practically nowhere. 

Some part of his mind supplied the fact that his father would think the place was horrendous and disorderly, but to Draco there was something comforting and warming about the house. The Manor had never given him that feeling, nowhere really had until Hogwarts and now here.

“Nothing special,” Ron said as he followed Harry, who had opened his door and was standing outside, out of the car. His cheeks were flushed pink, his gaze trained on the ground like he was embarrassed. 

“It’s _brilliant,”_ Harry breathed, the wide grin that had been on his face before returning and lighting up his green eyes. 

“Yeah, it is.”


End file.
